Geoffrey O’Connor: ‘I’m Suddenly Embracing The Artifice Of It All’

In amongst a solo US tour with Jens Lekman, Melbourne Festival supports with Bachelorette, and his own album launch shows, DOUG WALLEN finds time to talk to Geoffrey O’Connor about stage presentation, his control freak tendencies, and ‘brutally clean sounds’.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Geoffrey O’Connor may seem meek at first pass, but he’s proven a dab hand at songwriting. Between his Melbourne band The Crayon Fields, his bygone solo project Sly Hats and his current outing under his birth name, the whispery pop crooner now has four moody, sophisticated albums under his belt.

We’re talking pop of the indie variety, although O’Connor’s new Vanity is Forever might easily sneak into the proper charts if it could somehow be beamed back to the 1980s that partly inspired its brooding, sensual ballads. Built around vaporous synthesisers with a yen for duets and programmed drums, O’Connor’s latest batch of songs mine love, lust, and late-night reflection.

Just prior to heading to the U.S. for a short tour with Jens Lekman – he admits looking forward to watching In Treatment and Seinfeld on the plane – O’Connor weighed in on his new record, his live set-up, and the trouble with collaborations.

Who’s in the Geoffrey O’Connor Band you’ve been playing with?
It’s Esther Edquist. She’s a solo artist as well: she plays [as] Northlands. She’s got a couple projects on the go. I needed someone I could sing the duets with, and someone who could play synthesiser. She’s got a great voice and she’s a synthesiser whiz. Then I’ve got Ben Montero, who plays in Montero. That’s a band I play in as well. I guess we back each other up in that way. He’s really sweet. It’s just those two. All the drums on the record are pretty much programmed, and so because so much of it is set to these light and visual things, I needed to have a fairly tight, small unit. It also looks a bit distinctive, with two synthesisers flanking me. I like it.

Are you playing alone on this U.S. tour?
Yeah. I guess because I play under my birth name, [people will] assume it’s a solo act. And I’m totally happy to do that.

Were there certain things you had to get used to when you started playing outside of The Crayon Fields?
Yeah, I wanted to make it fairly distinct. And that was a difficult thing to do. But also, it just gives me a lot more breathing space. Like if a song that I’m getting together with them isn’t working, I can flesh it out in a completely different way by myself. And it means I don’t really have an off year. I alternate between the two bands each year.

The last time I interviewed you, you had applied for a grant. And I see the Victoria Rocks logo on the CD. How much did that help you realise what you wanted to do with this record?
That was such a great help. So much energy’s gone into doing The Crayon Fields, [but] I really didn’t want this to be a side project at all. I’m just as committed – or more – to my solo stuff, and that grant really helped. It meant that I could record in a proper studio when I wanted to. It also helped me make some videos, which I really like doing.

Was there a definable point where you changed direction from what Sly Hats sounded like to what this sounds like?
Not really. It was a fairly gradual evolution. It so much depends on the equipment you buy and the limits you impose on yourself. The Sly Hats record was zero budget, and I guess this was recorded in my house mostly, but the Sly Hats one was completely mixed by me and was very much a four-track job. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but I just wanted to make something more fully realised this time.

It’s hard to overlook the influence of ’80s soft-rock on this record. There’s the echoed drums, and the synth on ‘Things I Shouldn’t Do Anymore’ remind me of that Berlin song ‘Take My Breath Away’.
(Laughs) I love that song.

Have you always nursed an appreciation for that specific time and sound?
Not really. I don’t actually think it sounds that ’80s. I can totally understand why people mention that in their write-ups, and I think it’s totally fair. It’s just more [that] pop songs in the ’80s had so much more conviction and were very direct. I wanted to do that with this record, so it ended up sounding like that. Like a snare drum could be in your face in the ’80s, and I wanted to capture that sound for my record as well. It just sounds more grandiose, which I guess is what the ’80s was all about.

It also fits that vibe of the suave, lady-killing pop singer you’ve got going on, with the sunglasses and pink lighting...
Yeah, for sure. I’ve always had an interest in lights. I guess a lot of it comes from being a film student. I really like working with hyper-real lighting design, and I’ve been experimenting with film recently. They sort of influence how I work with sound now. I’m suddenly embracing the artifice of it all and making things very synthetic. Pure, but in this very synthetic way. Like brutally clean sounds.

I saw Darren Sylvester took the album’s cover photo, and the album he did on his own also has that suave, synthetic feel.
For sure. His record’s fantastic.

There are a lot of songs about nightlife and romance: how much of those come from actual experience, and how much are these fantasy/daydream musings?

“It sounds like such a romantic thing to do, drinking vodka by the fire with the acoustic guitar, playing parlour games and trading lyrics and crying, but it never happens.”

It’s all actual experience, but very much steeped in fantasy. It’s like how you would like to remember something and how you would like to have it recorded, rather than what actually may have occurred. Some of it is almost pure fantasy, but it’s sung from the perspective of someone who’s embracing a fantasy rather than actually documenting something that happened.

Is it helpful for you on a personal level to write these kind of songs and maybe work some things out?
Always. And it’s also just something that comes naturally to me. I don’t really like writing about philosophical things. The most important thing to me in the world is friendships and relationships, and those little melodramas that happen amongst friends and with myself as well. It’s just the easiest thing to write about: it’s something that you’re already immersed in as a person.

Does a friend or someone you’re dating ever worry that they’ll end up in a song?
There’s been a couple of occasions when someone’s said, “That song’s about me” when it really wasn’t. Which is a bit of an insult to me.

You’re touring the States with Jens Lekman. Is he someone you’ve gotten to known from living in Melbourne?
I first met him when I went to Sweden with Guy [Blackman] and we did a few shows with him. Since then, we’ve played a couple of shows in Australia. He just emailed me and asked me if I’d like to come on the tour. It was great.

I heard the Lawrence Arabia remix of ‘Whatever Leads Me to You’. Are you planning to commission more remixes?
Yeah, there’s a few in the works at the moment. I’m quite into the idea of remixes. It’s quite exciting when you get to hear them for the first time. It’s also quite nerve-wracking, the idea that these people are going to listen to your vocals dry and hear all the breathing and coughing and stuff in the background. But the recording process for me is like a endless remix. I’m constantly reworking songs and coming up with different versions of them until I get the right one. I never really set out to record something with an end point in mind.

[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Whatever Leads Me To You (Lawrence Arabia Remix) by Geoffrey O'Connor

Are there any new Crayon Fields songs floating around?
We’re recording demos at the moment. We’ve got all the songs ready: we just need to find time to record them.

How are they seeming so far, compared to the first two albums?
Quite different. It’s hard to say at this stage, because we haven’t finished any of the recording. It’s definitely a bit more synthetic as well, and just a different approach to harmonies and song structure than we’ve had in the past.

Is it hard to keep these two projects from bleeding into each other?
No, I don’t really struggle with that so much anymore. I have a lot of problems with just making enough time for the both of them. But it’s never really been a huge problem, I guess because they’re such different set-ups. One is electronic-drums-and-synthesiser-based and the other is natural drums and guitars.

I know you’ve written a few songs for people. Are you still doing a fair bit of collaboration?
Not really. There’s a few things that might happen in the next couple of months. I’m not really much of a collaborator, to be honest.

Do you mean you don’t have the time, or it just doesn’t come naturally to you?
It doesn’t come naturally to me. I like spending time with people: that’s one of the reasons I used to do a lot of that. But I’m just a bit of a control freak, really. I like playing in Ben’s band because he’s that way as well, and it’s nice to have this completely different experience of being in a band and trying to uphold someone else’s songs. But I’ve never sat down with someone and written a song together. It’s something that doesn’t make sense to me. It sounds like such a romantic thing to do, drinking vodka by the fire with the acoustic guitar, playing parlour games and trading lyrics and crying, but it never happens.

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Vanity is Forever is out now on Chapter. After a short American tour with Jens Lekman and then a Melbourne Festival show with Lucky Dragons (Oct. 12 at Toff in Town), Geoffrey O’Connor will launch the album in November.

Fri, Nov 4 – Northcote Social Club, Melbourne, VIC
Fri, Nov 18 – Goodgod Small Club (with the Twerps), Sydney, NSW